Hydroponic greenhouse update + bucket potatoes reveal
Hey,
I've been away on a little holiday and came back to find a (lovely)jungle in my greenhouse. It's amazing how quickly plants will grow in 4 days.
The great thing about growing hydroponically is that I was able to just leave things on their own while I was away, everything gets watered and fed automatically; I did get a friend to come and check that my reservoir had enough water and to give it a little top up if needed.
He was paid in nasturtium flowers, thought he would have them all but there were still loads this morning.
As you can see I picked some more lemon cucumbers and cucamelons, I have hundreds of those little bombs of cucumber flavour.
The nasturtium plant really surprised me, I thought it would stay kinda small but it's taking over it's part of the green house. It really loves being grown in my system. I think I might have to build a little cage around it to keep it in check.
I started a few jersey devil tomato plants but only one survived unfortunately and it has some really good looking fruit maturing.
I've got a couple of darkest tomato plants finally having ripe fruit. I was a bit worried when I got the seeds, I didn't really think these would grow true to the description as I got them from an ebay seller from china that didn't have particularly good reviews but it turned out alright. They've got a really nice colour, my photo doesn't really do them justice.
Cleaned the jungle up a bit and put all the leaves on my compost pile; the pile finally started properly, it is really warm now, even steaming.
While I was there I got really curious about my bucket grown potatoes. I've grown potatoes in containers with great success before but this is the first time I've grown them in containers of this size (14 litre buckets).
I've grown them in green waste that wasn't fully composted, mostly my hedge trimmings and some straw so I wasn't hoping for too much really.
In the end this bucket didn't have an extraordinary production but it is just enough to build a meal out of them.
That's about it, my greenhouse continues to surprise me and provide with quite a bit of lovely produce!
Cheers for checking it out again!
love this post. I grew potatoes in a laundry basket this year as an experiment so I am anxious to get to see what is in it when it is done growing.
Thanks!
I do hope that my other buckets will have a larger yield though, hehe, these ones were pretty nice.
I'm going to keep an eye out and see how your laundry basket will work out.
I like the looks of that bucket watermelon plant and that you're growing it vertically.
Thank you. I will update with the watermelon as well
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These are healthy looking produce. I am maintaining a small vegetable garden at home too, but haven't tried hydroponics/aqua-phonics and am very much interested. I just haven't had the time to study how to set up. I will look through your blog and see if any of the ones you posted covered that. If not, I am sure a lot of people will appreciate a walk-through. I for one sure will. Thanks a ton for sharing this.
Thank you! I'm quite happy about the way it's progressing. It's my first year growing hydroponically and it makes things so much easier.
To save you some scrolling I've got posts detailing the construction of the greenhouse here and here. I've documented the build of the system here and the first update is here.
Hehe, looking at how it looked two months ago it's hard to believe some of the tomato plants are over 10 feet long now.
Let me know if you have any questions or need some tips. It's quite easy and cheap to build such a system!
Cheers
This is so awesome. I love seeing a lush green garden that is thriving. It makes my heart so happy. So does harvesting the fruits of said lush green garden. I find harvesting potatoes out of a bucket especially satisfying.
Happy Gardening and hope you enjoyed your Holiday. :)
Thank you!
It truly is so satisfying and rewarding to pick and eat something grown round the home!
Awesome dog names btw, going to keep an eye out for their adventures!
Cheers
Thanks! they certainly make the homestead a lot more fun with their puppy antics.
That's quite the haul! Looks good. I wish I could grow fresh veggies.
Thank you!
You should have a look at container gardening; you can grow lots of different plants in small spaces or look at microgreens, they are great! They grow in 7-14 days and all you need is the seeds, a container(takeaway box for example) and something to grow on(paper towels or old tshirts work perfectly fine).
source
Great! You have some curious varieties going there. I've heard you should be careful about composting potato and tomato leafs, because of disease surviving the compost cycle.
Thanks! I had seeds for loads of different varieties, not all made it unfortunately.
Yes, you're right about the composting bit but it only matters if you're using it on the same plant family. Most diseases are plant family specific so you can use tomato and potato compost to grow strawberries for example. I'm composting them for growing shrubs and trees and for a steady supply of earth worms for fishing:)
My toms are growing hydroponically on inorganic medium anyway; I haven't decided yet if I want to reuse that medium or not. They do not have any diseases I can identify but if I reuse the growing medium I will soak it in a peroxide or a bleach solution to kill off most things.
Looks awesome. I like the fact that you have chosen some unconventional varieties.
Thanks!
I tried to get as many types as I could, seemed fun to experiment with more unusual ones, see which one does best.
Not all the varieties I started actually survived a cold night earlier this year, but I can give those another go next season.